Social Media and Protest in Algorithmic Societies

Thinking within the field of social media and communication has recently taken an “algorithmicturn”. Studies have for example revealed how algorithmically generated news feeds containing our acquaintances’ actions and opinions influence the issues on our agenda and how these issues are framed, which in turn influences our decisions and preferences. As such algorithms are important for protest movements. Twitters trending algorithm has for example been studied in relation to the Occupy protests. This presentation will discuss social media and protest out of a definition of the algorithmic situation as a process seeking problem-solving, involving both humans and technology. Algorithms in themselves are technologies of automated calculation / filtering / weighing (mining) of data (that may or may not be biased) in a big-data environment. Given its technological design of automatic calculation, there is often an assumption that algorithmic output is unbiased and free from subjectivity. This belief has been critiqued, and rightly so, as the problems themselves, as well as the algorithms, are formulated by humans. As such they embody social norms, values, imaginations, perceptions, rules, processes and are encoded with human intentions that may or may not be fulfilled. Based on the above understanding of algorithms, I approach algorithmic society as defined by its problems and problem formulations. In the presentation I will reflect on the role/ use of social media in protest movements in such a society. I will exemplify these reflections out of a study of middle-class protest to save a local bathhous